All but one fighter from Team Gold Glory was currently released from any contractual obligations to Strikeforce or the UFC. Company president Dana White says it all boils down to a differing philosophy on how they do business.

That actually makes a lot of sense to me. In what other business is the manager paid first? Maybe there's a few, but it seems pretty backwards to me. Why wouldn't they just take their cut? Seems like it just opens up a lot of opportunity for fighters to be abused.

Exploitation of fighters is probably more common then we think. We always hear about fighters changing camps. Some may change for that very reason. We don't know . The thing that sucks is Sergei is one of my top 3 favorite fighters. All the more reason to get HDnet

Last edited 8/4/11 6:14PM server time by prophecy033Edit note/reason: n/a

This isn't the first move UFC has made in order to try and minimize the role of fighter management in MMA.

If it were about fighters getting taken advantage of, then I would be on board with Dana on this one. But it isn't. Golden Glory fighters are not being taken advantage of. In fact, they usually have contracts pay pretty nicely.

Instead, this is all about the power dynamics of MMA. Zuffa doesn't really care who's name is on the check they write, or at least they shouldn'tf so long as they are getting what they paid for. But management companies are there on behalf of fighters. They make Zuffa's contract negotiations more difficult. Probably even more concerning to Zuffa, they constitute a source of influence in MMA that runs directly opposes Zuffa's desire to have complete control of their fighters. Marginalizing managers and agents works towards Zuffa's goal of having no management, and instead just dealing with the fighters directly, which will in turn lead to fighters getting paid less and with less favorable terms on their contract.